Dine About Town vs. Restaurant Week

One thing that I really miss about New York is Restaurant Week. For two weeks in the winter and summer, restaurants would produce a prix fixe lunch menu for a price matching the year: $20.02 for example. Nearly every fine dining establishment participated, and I remember the excitement of planning how we were going to squeeze in all these restaurants that we wanted to try. We would go through the list, look up each restaurant in Zagat, and figure out where the best deals were. Then we'd eagerly make our reservations, upset to be shut out at some because other more organized people had beaten us to the phones, and triumphant when we got the reservation we wanted. Our best discovery was finding that Danny Meyer (Mr. Hospitality) had his restaurants give you a gift certificate at the end of your meal for the same amount as the prix fixe deal to entice you to return - and we definitely did. Although I hear that the prices have gone up, the program still gets a ton of participants and is a great deal.

Now that I'm in San Francisco, the closest thing to restaurant week is Dine About Town. For the month of January, participating restaurants offer a prix fixe meal which is $21.95 for lunch and $31.95 for dinner. However, fewer of the city's top restaurants participate in this program, so finding the right place to eat is even more of a challenge than in New York. Additionally, because the restaurants must cut costs to offer this less expensive meal, their menus look like standard catered fare (New York restaurants seem to manage this constraint better by offering more interesting options). Last year, my friend and I went to Farallon for lunch which was a real treat but another friend and I had a worse experience at Restaurant Lulu. This year's restaurants have just been posted. We'll see if any of them are worthy of Date Night.